


Missing & Presumed Dead

by icewhisper



Series: Holiday Cheer & Tears [25]
Category: DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV), The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Bad Things Happen Bingo, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-25
Updated: 2018-12-25
Packaged: 2019-09-27 07:16:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,277
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17157647
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/icewhisper/pseuds/icewhisper
Summary: Len heard about the fire the next morning when he walked downstairs and heard the newscaster talking about the fire that engulfed a house and killed a family in Keystone. He’d stopped dead at the bottom of the stairs, heart hammering and… No. It wasn’t Mick, he told himself. Fires happen. It had been a dry summer. It wasn’t as if the Rory’s farm was the only farm in Keystone. It was fine. It was perfectly fine.It wasn’t.





	Missing & Presumed Dead

Len heard about the fire the next morning when he walked downstairs and heard the newscaster talking about the fire that engulfed a house and killed a family in Keystone. He’d stopped dead at the bottom of the stairs, heart hammering and… No. It wasn’t Mick, he told himself. Fires happen. It had been a dry summer. It wasn’t as if the Rory’s farm was the only farm in Keystone. It was fine. It was perfectly fine.

It wasn’t.

He barely held back the noise that tried to bubble up his throat when he saw the footage playing across the screen. The smoking husk of a mostly-demolished house. The old tractor that had broken down years ago and had turned into a jungle gym of sorts for the kids.

He held onto the doorframe so tightly, his knuckles went white. It was barely enough to keep him standing.

“Lenny?”

He shook his head without looking at Lisa. No. Not now. He couldn’t… Not yet. He couldn’t-

Firemen were carrying bags out of the remains of the house.

Body bags.

He was going to throw up.

This wasn’t happening. This wasn’t happening. This wasn’t happening. This wasn’t-

“Lenny, what’s wrong?”

He looked at Lisa finally, wide-eyed, and he thought for a second that she looked a little blurry. Was he having a panic attack? Fuck. His dad was right in the living room and Lisa didn’t know how to talk him down. Mick was the only one who-

Body bags. There were body bags coming out of Mick’s house. There was a fire. He-

“Why’re you crying?” Lisa asked as little hands held onto his arm. He flinched.

“Go get your sleepover bag,” he told her quietly. “We’re going to Mrs. Parker’s.”

She was, at least. He only stayed long enough to tell the woman that something came up, that he couldn’t leave her at home, and could she watch Lisa until he could sort some stuff out?

Funerals. Who would plan funerals? Mick had aunts and uncles, right? Cousins. Danny had been a fucking nightmare when he came last year.

He spent most of the bus ride to Keystone with his head between his legs. One woman asked him if he needed a doctor. He snarled at her to leave him alone between gasps.

The cops were still there when he came running up the street towards the house. Cars and police tape and so many flashing lights that it made him dizzy.

“Hey! Hey! Hold on!”

Hands grabbed him and in any other situation, he would have locked up and tried to jerk away, but the smell of smoke was burning his nostrils and he looked at the cop holding onto him, panicked. “Mick. I know them. Where. Who’s-”

The cop’s face went sympathetic and Len felt the bottom fall out of his stomach. “Aw, kid,” he sighed. “There’s a lot of damage in there. It…doesn’t look good.”

“Mick has trouble sleeping at night,” he argued. “He takes a lot of walks-”

“Which one’s Mick?”

“Mick. Michael. The oldest. He…” Len’s breath caught. “Where is he?”

“Do you wanna sit? You look like you’re gonna fall over.”

“Where. Is. Mick?”

The cop hesitated for a minute. “He’s the one with the arson record?”

“He wouldn’t burn anything close to the house,” Len said. “It’s been too dry. There’s an old barn his dad doesn’t care about. They let him burn stuff out there. It’s,” he paused and sucked in a breath, “away from the house. The animals.”

“No one’s found him yet,” the cop told him gently and Len thought he was probably giving more information to a random kid than he was supposed to, but he looked green. Young. He was probably only a few years older than them. Fresh out of the Academy. “He could have gotten scared and run off, but right now, we’re not sure.”

“Survivors? There… Emma’s birthday is next week.” Lisa was supposed to come to the birthday party. Len had hid some money from their dad and took Lisa to buy a new doll. They’d wrapped it in the funny pages from an old newspaper. Lisa had drawn a card.

But the cop’s face turned even sadder and he shook his head. “None yet.”

“None at all,” Len corrected and looked back towards the long driveway and what he could see of the house. “They’re…”

“You should sit down. You look pretty pale.”

Len shook his head, even as the cop – Hendricks, his badge said his name was Hendricks – was leading him over to sit on the bumper of an ambulance. “You gotta let me look. The barn. I know where it is-”

“We’ve got dogs searching the property. They already cleared the barn.”

“The _old one_.”

“They cleared both.” Hendricks sighed. “Kid, I am so sorry.”

Len shook his head again. And again. He kept shaking it as his breath hiccupped and broke into a sob. He wasn’t crying. He didn’t cry where people could see him.

But the cops were Keystone, not Central. They didn’t know him and they didn’t know his dad. They knew the Rorys with their six kids. They knew the people they were pulling out in body bags. They knew the people that they’d have to bury and kids would need grief counselors at the schools, because kids don’t know how to deal with death and, fuck, what was he going to tell Lisa? How the fuck was he supposed to tell her that Emma was gone or that Mick was gone? How was he supposed to tell her all of them were gone and they weren’t coming back?

How was he supposed to tell her anything when he couldn’t breathe?

Someone slipped an oxygen mask around his face and fingers came around his wrist to measure his pulse. He thought someone might have been talking to him, but the world was blurry with panic and tears and the blood was rushing too loudly in his ears for him to hear anything. Dead. They were all dead. They were all-

Someone was yelling out in the distance, but it sounded like he was underwater. It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered. He was going to have to go back to Central and tell Lisa that Mick wouldn’t be coming by to help with the cookies for her bake sale. She’d been so excited. Len could barely boil water, but Mick knew how to make chocolate chip cookies from scratch.

He pressed the heels of his hands to his eyes to wipe the tears away and look back to the house and the firefighters walking with someone. The dumb sleeveless jacket laid over plaid that Mick liked and Len said made him look like the farm boy Mick insisted he wasn’t. Leading him towards the ambulance and-

Mick.

It was Mick.

He pulled the oxygen mask off clumsily as he stumbled off the bumper and ran at Mick. Fuck everything. Fuck his touching issues. Fuck the people watching. He hugged Mick, because he hadn’t thought he’d get another chance and he was _there_. He was walking and he was pale, but he was breathing.

“Lenny, something happened. I don’t,” Mick’s voice broke off as he crumpled down to hide his face in Len’s shoulder, “I don’t remember what happened. They’re saying I did it. I don’t _remember_. I swear, I don’t remember.”

“It’s okay,” Len gasped out as Mick’s fingers dug in too hard. “It’s okay. It’s okay.”

It wasn’t okay and it wouldn’t be okay for a long time.

They held onto each other until the firefighters forced them towards the ambulance.

The End

**Author's Note:**

> This is it, guys! The entire bingo card has been filled and, by some miracle, I didn't miss a day! Trust me, this is a major accomplishment for me.


End file.
